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Phil Saviano Shines “Spotlight” on Clergy Abuse Epidemic

In Radio and Web Reports by PhilSaviano

Feb. 16, 2016 | BCGAVEL.COM — It was the winter of 1993, and Phil Saviano was scouring microfilm in Boston College’s O’Neill Library, feeding reel after reel into the reader, copying and printing articles that would prove especially useful in his investigation. BC’s extensive collection of Catholic publications and its copies of the Catholic directories proved to be revealing, both for Saviano’s research and later, for the investigations of The Boston Globe’s ‘Spotlight’ team.
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2007 | 5 Years Later, Abuse Scandal Still Echoes Through Catholic Church

In Radio and Web Reports by PhilSaviano

January 12, 2007 – By Rachel Martin, NPR
Five years ago this month, The Boston Globe published a series of reports exposing widespread allegations of sex abuse by clergy in Boston and efforts by the Catholic Church hierarchy to cover it up.

According to the Globe, 130 people claimed to have been sexually abused by Father John Geoghan, and church officials had known about the abuse and covered it up. The scandal triggered a chain reaction. Thousands of victims of clergy sex abuse around the country went public and filed suit, creating a scandal that rocked American Catholicism and has cost the Catholic Church more than $1 billion.

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2005 | WFCR Radio Amherst, MA – Interview with Phil Saviano

In Radio and Web Reports by PhilSaviano

April 5, 2005 | Phil Saviano returns to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he spent his college days in the early 1970s. He is on campus to give a speech as part of the University’s sex assault awareness and prevention program. Radio Host Bob Paquette talks to Phil about his years of public involvement in the clergy abuse issue.

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2003 | WBZ Radio Boston “The “David Brudnoy Show” – O’Malley Is Appointed to Head Boston Archdiocese

In Radio and Web Reports by PhilSaviano

JUNE 2003 | Sean O’Malley is appointed to be the Archbishop of Boston, replacing the Cardinal Bernand Law who had resigned six months previously. David’s guests are Attorney Eric MacLeish, SNAP leader Phil Saviano and Philip Lawler. They and listeners who call in to the show attempt to answer the questions, What can the new archbishop do? What should he do? to regain the trust of the Greater Boston Catholic community which has been shattered by the revelations that scores of priests have sexually preyed upon vulnerable children.

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2002 | WHYY-FM Philadelphia, PA “Radio Times” Talk Show, February 27, 2002

In Radio and Web Reports by PhilSaviano

Recorded broadcast from the Philadelphia NPR radio station, WHYY features a discussion on the unfolding Catholic clergy abuse crisis. Guests include SNAP’s Phil Saviano, Catherine Rossi, the director of communications for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and Rev. James Gill, a psychiatrist and Jesuit priest working at the Institute of Living, a residential psychiatric hospital in Hartford, CT. Note that three years after this broadcast, in September 2005, a Grand Jury announced findings that Philadelphia Cardinal Bevilacqua and his predecessor orchestrated a systematic cover-up spanning four decades. They managed to shield from criminal charges 63 priests who had molested hundreds of children.